John Brennan confirmed as CIA director

WASHINGTON -- The Senate confirmed John Brennan to be CIA director yesterday after the Obama administration bowed to demands from Republicans blocking the nomination and stated explicitly that there are limits on the president's power to use drones against U.S. terror suspects on American soil.

The vote was 63-34 and came just hours after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a possible 2016 presidential candidate, held the floor past midnight in an old-style filibuster of the nomination to extract an answer from the administration.

Still, Brennan won some GOP support. Thirteen Republicans voted with 49 Democrats and one independent to give Brennan, who has been President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, the top job at the spy agency.

He will replace Michael Morell, the CIA's deputy director. He has been acting director since David Petraeus resigned in November.

The confirmation vote came moments after Democrats prevailed 81-16 to end the filibuster.

In a series of fast-moving events, by Senate standards, Attorney General Eric Holder sent a one-paragraph letter to Paul, who had commanded the floor for nearly 13 hours on Wednesday and into yesterday.

"It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: 'Does the president have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?" Holder wrote Paul. "The answer to that question is no."

That cleared the way.

"We worked very hard on a constitutional question to get an answer from the president," Paul said after voting against Brennan. "It may have been a little harder than we wish it had been, but in the end I think it was a good healthy debate for the country to finally get an answer that the Fifth Amendment applies to all Americans."

However, Paul's stand on the Brennan nomination and insistence that the Obama administration explain its controversial drone program exposed a deep split among Senate Republicans, pitting leader Mitch McConnell, libertarians and tea partyers against military hawks such as John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.